Are efficient LED bulbs worth the price?

Right now I can get a small supply of Philips L Prize 60w Led bulbs at an attractive price. Is it worth switching my home and business over if I already have CFLs installed? The CFLs always seem to burn out early, for some reason. The one I can get is the 9290002097 model no. LED Bulb Test . Any thoughts or reliable calculators? Thanks in advance for your reply! Tom D

The Phillips L Prize 60w equivalent Model 9290002097 has been updated to 10w, 27.4yr, 940 lumens, 2700k. It costs roughly fifty dollars. It requires a three inch extension in a standard high hat fixture, available from china for an additional three dollars.

If you already have CFLs installed throughout your home which use about 20w each, so that you can actually see, the payback period of the LED is so long it's not worth calculating. However it is known that certain brands of CFLs last longer than others, complicating the calculation.

My favorite magazine is currently evaluating my favorite LED, above. They will weigh in shortly. In the meantime, we have gov't tests of early L Prize bulbs, which we know to be flawed, since they only place the bulbs in a hot box. In the real world, bulbs are exposed to voltage surges, vibration, excess heat, and installation and removal, which shorten their lives. The LED technology is improving quickly, so that it makes it impossible for a person to know when to jump in.

As I told my spouse, as a guess, maybe $5-10 is the right price point to convert from CFL to LED. I ignored your talking down statement about the computer vs the pencil. Please continue to confuse the rest of the world, but leave me untouched. I'm at an advantage here as I'm not selling LED technology, only seeking best technology available at a low and reasonable cost! We're talking about converting from CFL to LED here, not incandescent to LED! t

Our house is 99% CFL - sole exceptions are refrigerator and oven interior lamps. We are perfectly happy with them.

The one type of CFL that consistently fails to satisfy is the fully enclosed spiral within a sphere typically deployed over vanity mirrors (several of our rental properties have these but not our main home). The enclosed spirals seem to take a minute or more to warm up. In those fixtures I now deploy GE Hybrid "bright from the start" bulbs that fire a halogen for the first minute.

I like the LED light but would agree with Curt that the cost does not justify the difference at this time. However cost is not everything. There is the coolness factor and for many the LED is just plain hip. There is the health issue with mercury in the home as well.

I think either product is a huge upgrade from incandescent. I tried bringing some LED’s home at one point and the better half did not like the spectrum. This was some time ago and I know that much has changed since that costly mistake. Dennis suggests there will be more changes over the next 24 months. Since I believe he has probably forgotten more than I know about LED I look forward to seeing the new technology.

While I do believe that mercury is a problem it has been well documented that the amount of mercury released by a coal power plant for using more watts needed to burn an incandescent vs a CFL far outstrips the amount of mercury in a CFL. I do not ignore the problem but I am not swayed to not purchase the product nor do I shy from suggesting it to customers as an alternative to incandescent. I think we can all agree they should not be in the landfill and should be recycled.

I often see the figure of 13 watts but many CFLs run at less. The one next to my TV/Reading chair which illuminates just fine runs at less than 8 watts. While CFL were once and still are reviled I think the newer models aka the last 5 years or more have fixed the issue of flickering and color and are quite nice.

I think the biggest gain in LED is the spread has become much more pleasant. The lack of light diffusion I believe is one of the issues my wife did not like in the older LED that I have. The color is much better today as well as these lamps my wife disliked were very white.

I am unconvinced the health concern is of such great extent to trump the cost for me and believe the risks are low. At a cost of less than eight dollars for four bulbs at Home Depot CFL lighting is extremely cost effective.

I do not think the coolness factor can be overlooked as very few things in our industry are considered cool to those outside our industry besides PV solar and LED’s. Folks will pay for cool.

Thank you for your comments. I agree with most of them. Especially like your point about significant others and how the light looks. For HGTV watchers especially, this is huge! Meanwhile, back at the "test lab..." t